Exhibitions

In our fantasies and our phobias. Onto our streets and into our mirrors. Down our alleys and our angers, under our bridges and our skins. In the prisons we fear and the cells we can’t escape.

Bad people.

Celebrating the final exhibition of Hot Art Wet City, Phantoms In The Front Yard reveal their dirty little pictures.

Come see the worst, the naughtiest, the darkest, the damnedest, the shady, the skittish, the last and the least, yourself. We know you’ll take a thing or two away. With miniature pieces and their miniature prices, it may even be some art.

Founded in 2010, Phantoms in the Front Yard is a Vancouver-based touring art collective with the mandate to challenge the contemporary Canadian art scene, reviving the human subject as muse. Figurative art has become the phantom of the fine art world, haunting both Modernism and Postmodernism with its ties to a classical tradition, refusing to be dismissed, ignored or forgotten.

For their 10th biannual themed exhibition, Vancouver-based figurative collective Phantoms in the Front Yard explores drug culture and its impact. Whether legal, illegal, pharmaceutical, naturopathic, synthetic, or cultivated, drugs have an ever more varied presence on our media, conversations, and society in general. From their use and misuse to their purpose, promise and prominence, they are tied to still wider spectrum of societal issues.

Over the Counter Culture makes reference to propaganda posters, contemporary advertising, fictional and technical literature, and historical print and painting styles, to explore the evolving complexities circling the perceptions and uses of drugs in cultures past and present.

Phantoms in the Front Yard is proud to have this exhibition be a portion of
Scene and Unseen – an Arts Encounter at the Gordon Smith Gallery.
2121 Lonsdale Ave,North Vancouver, British Columbia V7M 2K6
Gallery Hours: Tue-Sat: 12:00 pm-5:00 pm

Show runs until December 16th, 2015
For further Gallery information
contact 604-998-8563 or Click.

Images and words inform and deceive. The interplay of text and visuals may be both penetrating and perplexing; actions may move fluidly within stationary pages, and round figures are revealed from the depths of flat surfaces. Unreliable Narrator invites you to a combined theatre and gallery space to see plays combined with paintings. Each artist has chosen a play whose words – and pages themselves – are incorporated into our figurative tradition.

Both theatrical and figurative art engage bodies. We feel a natural affinity with plays as they reflect a character and a moment; as they prompt gatherings of people around a singular experience. In Unreliable Narrator the notions of theatre, painting, plays, the artist and the audience collapse into the affinity of experience.

Playwrights referenced include Dylan Thomas, Harold Pinter, William Butler Yeats, and William Shakespeare.
There will be no small parts, only small artworks.

For this exhibition, Phantoms In the Front Yard take on the theme of contemporary myth, and delve into the labyrinth of modern spirituality. Through the lenses of classical and aboriginal mythologies from the world over, each Phantoms member will explore, distort and personalize these wide ranging, yet related narratives. From the fantastical to the banal, sagas, fables and fairy tales will be distilled and synthesized with each artist’s respective figurative medium.

Public Dreams, Private Myths will present an array of dynamic paintings, drawings and sculpture, which touch on folk tales, creation myth, and personal family legends, to challenge the viewer and prompt the question: who are the gods and archetypes of our time?

Each member will create a small sculptural component in addition to their 2-dimensional pieces.

This exhibition takes place under the umbrella of Meccanica Presentation Centre’s Revolving Door event series. Expect entertainemnt, food, drink and as always, fantastic paintings as well as sculpture.

Someone you miss without having been with them. Someone you know who doesn’t know you. Someone you long for who is already there … Where do we know others? Or not know them? In our fantasies? Our memories? How are we impacted by people we have never met?

The Vancouver-based figurative collective Phantoms in the Front Yard are exploring the spaces between strangers and familiars for their next show at the Burrard Hotel for a one-night-only exhibition of miniature pieces – 10×10 inches and much smaller!

This show’s guests are the internationally recognized multi-media and installation artist Christian Nicolay; and the award-winning, classically trained master of both figure and portrait Mandy Boursicot.

Phantoms in the Front Yard figurative collective is proud to present its latest exhibition at the Pendulum Gallery. In addition to its regular members: Michael Abraham, Jeremiah Birnbaum, Paul Morstad, Jonathan Sutton and Jay Senetchko, we also welcome two guest members for the SHED exhibition: Caroline Weaver and Bruce Pashak.

The theme for this exhibition, Shed, takes on several possibilities to its interpretation, including its noun or verb form, along with its historic incarnations as the name of an Egyptian deity and a weaving term. The work will be presented at a time of year when nature itself is falling, surrendering, and retracting, and will find its dwelling in this sense of a darkening. One interpretation of this theme might be letting go to the point of self deprivation, while a lighter aspect may suggest minimalism, and a continual shedding of whatever it is we no longer require.

On a vocationally appropriate level, Shed could be thought of as a monastic simplicity inherent in being still whilst making visual art, and the necessary dismissal of other things in order to maintain that practice. Even in the creation of an individual piece and artist constantly faces re-evaluation and the shedding of preconceptions. The word shed could also denote the actual structure of a simple workplace. Jay Senetchko, for example, will design and incorporate a small building around his visual meditations.

Our theme invites reflection on growth, aging, and proceeding through life in general, as our future becomes our present becoming our past. Jonathan Sutton’s images sense Shed here as an ongoing journey, taking current form as muted lullabies to ghosts in his personal history. All the while, accumulating interpretations and surprises around this single word are at play in the engaging mind of each Phantom Artist for this suite.

For each exhibition, one group member has proposed a theme that the entire group then develops work around.

The collaborative nature of this process continues to result in exciting work from exhibition to exhibition. In Bloodlines, the artists present a collection of deeply personal, carefully considered reflections on their lineages, and how this affects their understanding of themselves and their place in Canadian culture. Investigating this theme unearthed distant connections to European and Slavic ancestry; requiring each member to reconcile previously held beliefs and memories of their origins.

Apart from First Nations, everyone in the diverse country of Canada ultimately hails from somewhere else. Because of this, the artists feel their personal reflections will be widely shared by others and are excited to welcome all to view the tangible results.

For further information:
Please contact Pennylane Shen at 778.999.7436 or email info@phantomsinthefrontyard.com
Advance preview of exhibition and interview opportunities are available upon request.

The latest group show from Phantoms in the Front Yard puts writing and painting on a collision course. Each artist in the collective has pursued at least one writer, to establish together a specific selection of words – a short story, poetry, lyrics … as a point of response for original art work. The result is an exciting new collection reflecting the group’s continuing dedication to realistic and detailed rendering, as pressed through various off-kilter processes of responding deeply to other artists’ written creations.